Moving Dirty Crudes, Another Threat Posed by Dirty Fossil Fuels

Earlier this month, fire and a series of horrific explosions swept through Lac-Mégantic, a small town in Québec just miles from the Maine border, after an unmanned 72-car train derailed. The train was transporting 27,000 gallons of crude oil from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota to a refinery in New Brunswick on the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA). The death toll has climbed to more than 50 people. This is but one of the latest tragedies resulting from the rapid expansion of risky oil and gas drilling and fracking across North America.

Oil produced by the boom in North America from tar sands in Alberta and the Bakken Shale Formation under North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba requires transport. With pipelines already pumping at capacity, companies are turning to rails and ships to move their dirty products. Because most refineries in East Canada are not able to process heavy tar sand crudes, they are switching from distilling imported foreign light crudes to the cheaper Bakken light crudes.

The lives lost in Lac-Mégantic are an unfortunate display of what happens as we push for increased dirty fossil fuel production through President Obama’s “All of the Above” energy plan. Instead, we should be weaning ourselves off fossil fuel consumption and making the policy decisions that will lead us to a sustainable, clean energy future.

John Wu is a Food & Water Watch summer water research and policy intern and a junior at The College of Wooster.

Food &Water Watch champions healthy food and clean water for all. We stand up to corporations that put profits before people, and advocate for a democracy that improves people's lives and protects our environment.